Lily Tomlin At 'WRCH’s Nite Of Lite Laughter'

Lily Tomlin is the main attraction at WRCH's "Nite of Lite Laughter" benefit Oct. 19. (The Bushnell)

The great Lily Tomlin has been enjoying a career renaissance thanks to her Netflix series “Grace and Frankie,” but in fact she’s had remarkable successes in each of the last six decades.

Stardom first came to Tomlin with stand-up and sketch comedy in the 1960s. Her TV breakthrough was on “Laugh-In,” then bolstered by solo TV specials produced by future “Saturday Night Live” overlord Lorne Michael.

In the 1970s, she acted in the Robert Altman movies “Nashville” and “The Late Show,” leading to more mainstream-friendly movies in the 1980s such as “9 to 5,” “All of Me” and “The Incredible Shrinking Woman” and then to indie features and dark comedies like “Flirting With Disaster” and “I Heart Huckabees” in the 1990s.

Her award-winning one-woman stage show “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” was written for her by Tomlin’s longtime partner (now her wife) Jane Wagner in the mid-‘80s. That cosmic multi-character show has visited Connecticut numerous times on tour.

Currently, Tomlin is doing concert appearances billed as “An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin.” The show runs the gamut from her “Laugh-In” characters Ernestine and Edith Ann to “Search for Signs”’ all-knowing homeless woman Trudy, and also includes a Q&A session with the audience.